Winds of change? Humanist deflates popcorn neuroscience

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 11, 2011

Culture, Darwinism}

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In “Mind in the Mirror,” Raymond Tallis reflects on V.S. Ramachandran’s The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, “Neuroscience can explain many brain functions, but not the mystery of consciousness”:

The subtitle of V.S. Ramachandran’s latest book prompts a question: Why should “A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human” be of particular interest? The answer is obvious if you believe, as so many do, that humans are essentially their brains. When a brain scientist speaks, we should pay attention, for “What makes us human” then boils down to what makes our brains special, compared with those of other highly evolved creatures.

RaymondTallis

Dr. Ramachandran and many others, including prominent philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Patricia and Paul Churchland, promise that neuroscience will help us understand not only the mechanism of brain functions (such as those that coordinate movement or underpin speech) but also key features of human consciousness. As of yet, though, we have no neural explanation of even the most basic properties of consciousness, such as the unity of self, how it is rooted in an explicit past and explicit future, how experience is owned and referred to a self, and how we are, or feel that we are, voluntary agents. Neuroscience, in short, has no way of accommodating everyday first-person being.

No, and neuroscience is often invoked to explain things it doesn’t:

Here, as elsewhere, the intellectual audit trail connecting the neuroscience to the things he claims to explain is fragile. For a start, mirror neurons have been observed not just in monkeys and humans but also in swamp sparrows, enabling them to learn to sing the songs they hear. They are admirable birds, but their cultural achievements are modest. Moreover, the existence in humans of a distinct mirror neuron system with properties such as “mind-reading” is still contested. At any rate, the claim that mirror neurons are a “specialized circuitry for social cognition” in humans is a death-defying leap beyond the humble “Monkey see, Monkey do” function they were first observed to have.

Tallis describes himself, at his own site, as a humanist.

He is emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester, and will publish Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity, presumably a bash at evolutionary psychology and related pseudosciences.

It’s good to see actual humanists weighing in on these questions. Humanism had a respectable history before it was taken over by Darwin worshippers, at which point, the term might better have become “primatist.” What the new humanists were really interested in of human experience is what a chimpanzee could replicate. And once Apes R’ Us hit pop culture, it did considerable damage. After all, many people do not want to rise to the challenge of being human.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

More stories from The Mindful Hack, my blog on neuroscience and spirituality issues:

Comments

aiguy,
You assume the burden of proof is to show humans are deterministic. But whether or not humans are deterministic is unknown, and there is no default assumption that ought to be accepted as true just because we can’t demonstrate the case one way or the other.
Humans never could be deterministic and act as if that conclusion were known. Knowing something means that the entity that knows it is separate from the thing known. It requires a position outside, looking in. If we were fully determined, we could never know it, for all things we thought we knew would also be determined, there could be no escape, no objective vantage point, no way to "determine" anything at all, you would be the one "determined" instead, every bit of you, from top to bottom, including all thoughts. Clive Hayden_{January 14, 2011
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joseph,
Well ID does not use “intelligent cause” as it’s “sole explanatory concept” and we have defined intelligence”. For one the “intelligent” in Intelligent Design” refers to agency. It also refers to that which can create counterflow.
By "counterflow" I assume you mean contra-causal effects, and so by "agency" it appears you mean libertarian free will. That's fine and dandy, but it is not an assertion that can be empirically tested, at least at the present time. If you meant something else by these terms please tell me, along with some suggestion as to how we might decide if such a thing exists or not.
IOW it is all about cause and effect relationships.
I have no idea what you mean by this.
And the sad part about this little chat is that I have been over and over this with you already and you just refuse to listen.
I don't recall our chat, sorry. But I'm listening - really am trying my hardest here. I would ask you to try also to make your ideas as clear as you can so we can debate the issues themselves rather than just terminology. above, It would be nice if you could stop cluttering up the thread with excerpts from other sources. If you have an argument to make, see if you can articulate it in a concise manner, will you please?aiguy_{January 14, 2011
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This is one of the main reasons why chance and necessity will never generate novel information over and above what is already present in 'massively parallel' genomes ,, Poly-Functional Complexity equals Poly-Constrained Complexity http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYmaSrBPNEmGZGM4ejY3d3pfMjdoZmd2emZncQ DNA - Evolution Vs. Polyfuctionality - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4614519 Thus aiguy since you actually have zero evidence for material processes, in life or out of life, generating information over and above what was already present, and yet you yourself have generated, in your own post, more information than can reasonably be expected from the entire 'chance and necessity' resources of the universe over the entire history of the universe,,, Book Review - Meyer, Stephen C. Signature in the Cell. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Excerpt: As early as the 1960s, those who approached the problem of the origin of life from the standpoint of information theory and combinatorics observed that something was terribly amiss. Even if you grant the most generous assumptions: that every elementary particle in the observable universe is a chemical laboratory randomly splicing amino acids into proteins every Planck time for the entire history of the universe, there is a vanishingly small probability that even a single functionally folded protein of 150 amino acids would have been created. Now of course, elementary particles aren't chemical laboratories, nor does peptide synthesis take place where most of the baryonic mass of the universe resides: in stars or interstellar and intergalactic clouds. If you look at the chemistry, it gets even worse—almost indescribably so: the precursor molecules of many of these macromolecular structures cannot form under the same prebiotic conditions—they must be catalysed by enzymes created only by preexisting living cells, and the reactions required to assemble them into the molecules of biology will only go when mediated by other enzymes, assembled in the cell by precisely specified information in the genome. So, it comes down to this: Where did that information come from? The simplest known free living organism (although you may quibble about this, given that it's a parasite) has a genome of 582,970 base pairs, or about one megabit (assuming two bits of information for each nucleotide, of which there are four possibilities). Now, if you go back to the universe of elementary particle Planck time chemical labs and work the numbers, you find that in the finite time our universe has existed, you could have produced about 500 bits of structured, functional information by random search. Yet here we have a minimal information string which is (if you understand combinatorics) so indescribably improbable to have originated by chance that adjectives fail. http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_726.html ,,, then aiguy are you now going to say that you are not intelligent just so to maintain your atheistic prejudice?bornagain77_{January 14, 2011
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aiguy since the programming in a cell is vastly more complex than that found in any computer program:,,, Welcome to CoSBi - (Computational and Systems Biology) Excerpt: Biological systems are the most parallel systems ever studied and we hope to use our better understanding of how living systems handle information to design new computational paradigms, programming languages and software development environments. The net result would be the design and implementation of better applications firmly grounded on new computational, massively parallel paradigms in many different areas. http://www.cosbi.eu/index.php/component/content/article/171 ,,, then according to your logic it should be fairly easy for us to see the generation of functional prescriptive information in these vastly advanced computers. Yet when we test these living 'marvels of programming' we never find a gain of information that would violate what is termed Genetic Entropy,,, Evolution Vs Genetic Entropy - Andy McIntosh - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4028086 Michael Behe on Falsifying Intelligent Design - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jXXJN4o_A For a broad outline of the 'Fitness test', required to be passed to show a violation of the principle of Genetic Entropy, please see the following video and articles: Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? - 'The Fitness Test' - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3995248 List Of Degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria: http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp The following study is far more extensive than the preceding study, and solidly backs up the preceding conclusion: “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.(that is a net 'fitness gain' within a 'stressed' environment i.e. remove the stress from the environment and the parent strain is always more 'fit') http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness - Ann K. Gauger, Stephanie Ebnet, Pamela F. Fahey, and Ralph Seelke – 2010 Excerpt: When all of these possibilities are left open by the experimental design, the populations consistently take paths that reduce expression of trpAE49V,D60N, making the path to new (restored) function virtually inaccessible. This demonstrates that the cost of expressing genes that provide weak new functions is a significant constraint on the emergence of new functions. In particular, populations with multiple adaptive paths open to them may be much less likely to take an adaptive path to high fitness if that path requires over-expression. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.2/BIO-C.2010.2 Response from Ralph Seelke to David Hillis Regarding Testimony on Bacterial Evolution Before Texas State Board of Education, January 21, 2009 Excerpt: He has done excellent work showing the capabilities of evolution when it can take one step at a time. I have used a different approach to show the difficulties that evolution encounters when it must take two steps at a time. So while similar, our work has important differences, and Dr. Bull’s research has not contradicted or refuted my own. http://www.discovery.org/a/9951bornagain77_{January 14, 2011
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aiguy:
Yes, I’m very used to this. I ask endlessly for a definition of “intelligence”, and people grumble that everyone knows what it means and there’s no need for a definition. I point out that any scientific theory that uses “intelligent cause” as its sole explanatory concept really is obliged to say what that might mean in the context of the theory, and finally somebody deigns to take a crack at providing a meaningful definition.
Well ID does not use "intelligent cause" as it's "sole explanatory concept" and we have defined "intelligence". For one the "intelligent" in Intelligent Design" refers to agency. It also refers to that which can create counterflow. IOW it is all about cause and effect relationships. And the sad part about this little chat is that I have been over and over this with you already and you just refuse to listen.Joseph_{January 14, 2011
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Well aiguy, I see no argument, I see that you are severely misguided. Yet you refuse to acknowledge as such though provided with ample proof. It seems that proof only counts when you want it to count.bornagain77_{January 14, 2011
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bornagain
Well Well aiguy, please excuse poor ole ignorant me for intruding on such a exalted intellect as you seem to esteem yourself to be, but I do have a few problems with you saying that,,,,
Sorry to have hurt your feelings, but I stand by my assessment. You don't seem to have any grasp of the issues or the ability to construct an argument. And copying and pasting text and links from what other people say (or the Bible! :o) does not constitute your constructing an argument either.aiguy_{January 14, 2011
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Also of related note: The predominance of quarter-power (4-D) scaling in biology Excerpt: Many fundamental characteristics of organisms scale with body size as power laws of the form: Y = Yo M^b, where Y is some characteristic such as metabolic rate, stride length or life span, Yo is a normalization constant, M is body mass and b is the allometric scaling exponent. A longstanding puzzle in biology is why the exponent b is usually some simple multiple of 1/4 (4-Dimensional scaling) rather than a multiple of 1/3, as would be expected from Euclidean (3-Dimensional) scaling. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~drewa/pubs/savage_v_2004_f18_257.pdf “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection.,,, The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection." Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79 https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/16037/#comment-369806 Though Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini rightly find it inexplicable for 'random' Natural Selection to be the rational explanation for the scaling of the physiology, and anatomy, of living things to four-dimensional parameters, they do not seem to fully realize the implications this 'four dimensional scaling' of living things presents. This 4-D scaling is something we should rightly expect from a Intelligent Design perspective. This is because Intelligent Design holds that ‘higher dimensional transcendent information’ is more foundational to life, and even to the universe itself, than either matter or energy are. This higher dimensional 'expectation' for life, from a Intelligent Design perspective, is directly opposed to the expectation of the Darwinian framework, which holds that information, and indeed even the essence of life itself, is merely an 'emergent' property of the 3-D material realm. Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? A.C. McINTOSH Excerpt: It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate. http://journals.witpress.com/journals.asp?iid=47 Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint - 2010 Excerpt: “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/ Further notes: The ‘Fourth Dimension’ Of Living Systems https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Gs_qvlM8-7bFwl9rZUB9vS6SZgLH17eOZdT4UbPoy0Ybornagain77_{January 14, 2011
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Quantum Consciousness - Time Flies Backwards? - Stuart Hameroff MD Excerpt: Dean Radin and Dick Bierman have performed a number of experiments of emotional response in human subjects. The subjects view a computer screen on which appear (at randomly varying intervals) a series of images, some of which are emotionally neutral, and some of which are highly emotional (violent, sexual....). In Radin and Bierman's early studies, skin conductance of a finger was used to measure physiological response They found that subjects responded strongly to emotional images compared to neutral images, and that the emotional response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds BEFORE the image appeared! Recently Professor Bierman (University of Amsterdam) repeated these experiments with subjects in an fMRI brain imager and found emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Moreover he looked at raw data from other laboratories and found similar emotional responses before stimuli appeared. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/TimeFlies.html Study suggests precognition may be possible - November 2010 Excerpt: A Cornell University scientist has demonstrated that psi anomalies, more commonly known as precognition, premonitions or extra-sensory perception (ESP), really do exist at a statistically significant level. Psi anomalies are defined as "anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms." http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-precognition.html Mind-Brain Interaction and Science Fiction (Quantum connection) - Jeffrey Schwartz & Michael Egnor - audio http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2008-12-01T17_28_39-08_00 In The Wonder Of Being Human: Our Brain and Our Mind, Eccles and Robinson discussed the research of three groups of scientists (Robert Porter and Cobie Brinkman, Nils Lassen and Per Roland, and Hans Kornhuber and Luder Deeke), all of whom produced startling and undeniable evidence that a "mental intention" preceded an actual neuronal firing - thereby establishing that the mind is not the same thing as the brain, but is a separate entity altogether. http://books.google.com/books?id=J9pON9yB8HkC&pg=PT28&lpg=PT28 “As I remarked earlier, this may present an “insuperable” difficulty for some scientists of materialists bent, but the fact remains, and is demonstrated by research, that non-material mind acts on material brain.” Eccles "Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder." Heinrich Heine - in the year 1834 A Reply to Shermer Medical Evidence for NDEs (Near Death Experiences) – Pim van Lommel Excerpt: For decades, extensive research has been done to localize memories (information) inside the brain, so far without success.,,,,Nobel prize winner W. Penfield could sometimes induce flashes of recollection of the past (never a complete life review), experiences of light, sound or music, and rarely a kind of out-of-body experience. These experiences did not produce any transformation. After many years of research he finally reached the conclusion that it is not possible to localize memories (information) inside the brain.,, In trying to understand this concept of mutual interaction between the “invisible and not measurable” consciousness, with its enormous amount of information, and our visible, material body it seems wise to compare it with modern worldwide communication.,,, http://www.nderf.org/vonlommel_skeptic_response.htm And though it is not possible to localize memories (information) inside the brain, it is interesting to note how extremely complex the brain is in its ability to manipulate rudimentary information: Boggle Your Brain - November 2010 Excerpt: One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201011.htm#20101119a This following experiment is really interesting: Scientific Evidence That Mind Effects Matter - Random Number Generators - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4198007 I once asked a evolutionist, after showing him the preceding experiment, "Since you ultimately believe that the 'god of random chance' produced everything we see around us, what in the world is my mind doing pushing your god around?" Here is another article that is far more nuanced in its discerning of our 'transcendent mind' from our material brain, than the 'brute' empirical evidence I've listed: The Mind and Materialist Superstition - Six "conditions of mind" that are irreconcilable with materialism: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super.html Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.bornagain77_{January 14, 2011
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Well Well aiguy, please excuse poor ole ignorant me for intruding on such a exalted intellect as you seem to esteem yourself to be, but I do have a few problems with you saying that,,,, “There is nothing but chance and necessity operating inside human brains”. here are some links for you to detest: the assertion that consciousness is to be treated as a separate entity when dealing with quantum mechanics, and thus with the universe, has some very strong clout behind it. Quantum mind–body problem Parallels between quantum mechanics and mind/body dualism were first drawn by the founders of quantum mechanics including Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, and Eugene Wigner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind%E2%80%93body_problem "It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness." Eugene Wigner (1902 -1995) laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Wigner The Mental Universe - Richard Conn Henry - Professor of Physics John Hopkins University Excerpt: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.,,, Physicists shy away from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke "decoherence" - the notion that "the physical environment" is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in "Renninger-type" experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf That the mind of a individual observer would play such an integral, yet not complete 'closed loop' role, in instantaneous quantum wave collapse to uncertain 3-D particles, gives us clear evidence that our mind is a unique entity. A unique entity with a superior quality of existence when compared to the uncertain 3D particles of the material universe. This is clear evidence for the existence of the 'higher dimensional soul' of man that supersedes any material basis that the soul/mind has been purported to emerge from by materialists. I would also like to point out that the 'effect', of universal quantum wave collapse to each 'central 3D observer', gives us clear evidence of the extremely special importance that the 'cause' of the 'Infinite Mind of God' places on each of our own individual souls/minds. Psalm 139:17-18 How precious concerning me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. These following studies and videos confirm this 'superior quality' of existence for our souls/minds: Miracle Of Mind-Brain Recovery Following Hemispherectomies - Dr. Ben Carson - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994585/ Removing Half of Brain Improves Young Epileptics' Lives: Excerpt: "We are awed by the apparent retention of memory and by the retention of the child's personality and sense of humor,'' Dr. Eileen P. G. Vining; In further comment from the neuro-surgeons in the John Hopkins study: "Despite removal of one hemisphere, the intellect of all but one of the children seems either unchanged or improved. Intellect was only affected in the one child who had remained in a coma, vigil-like state, attributable to peri-operative complications." http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/19/science/removing-half-of-brain-improves-young-epileptics-lives.html The Day I Died - Part 4 of 6 - The Extremely 'Monitored' Near Death Experience of Pam Reynolds - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4045560 The Scientific Evidence for Near Death Experiences - Dr Jeffery Long - Melvin Morse M.D. - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4454627 Blind Woman Can See During Near Death Experience (NDE) - Pim von Lommel - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994599/ Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper (1997) conducted a study of 31 blind people, many of who reported vision during their Near Death Experiences (NDEs). 21 of these people had had an NDE while the remaining 10 had had an out-of-body experience (OBE), but no NDE. It was found that in the NDE sample, about half had been blind from birth. (of note: This 'anomaly' is also found for deaf people who can hear sound during their Near Death Experiences(NDEs).) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_1_64/ai_65076875/bornagain77_{January 14, 2011
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bornagain,
aiguy I disagree with just about everything you wrote, but to one point in particular, let us be clear that computers are not ‘intelligent’:
I guess you aren't up to telling me why you disagree with everything I wrote, so ok then, let's look at what you think about AI.
Sure the computer can recall massive amounts of information, and probably win at Jeopardy, but can it create the functional ‘prescriptive’ information that clearly sets transcendent intelligence (mind) apart from inanimate matter? Why yes it can, of course. If you disagree, then please describe the experiment that will resolve the issue!
In other words, no one has ever seen purely material processes generate functional ‘prescriptive’ information.
Yes they have - many computer programs do this routinely. If you disagree, then please describe the experiment that will resolve the issue! Oh, bornagain, you really aren't even a beginner at this I can see. There are lots of people who mount serious challenges to the claims of strong AI - start with John Lucas or Hubert Dreyfus or John Searle or Roger Penrose... - but these things you're bringing up are just silly. You confidently claim that mind is transcendent without telling us how you know, and that "prescriptive" information (your scare quotes!) can't be created by inanimate matter without telling us how one can decide when that is happening at all, or why a computer is "inanimate"... Sorry, but you're out of your league here. Read nullasulus or vjtorley here for some views you might agree with and with whom I disagree - these guys have at least done their homework.
Thus aiguy, all you, or anyone else, has to do is to violate Abel’s null hypothesis. "No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone.”
LOL. Here's AIGuy's null hypothesis: "There is nothing but chance and necessity operating inside human brains". Thus bornagain, all you, or anyone else, has to do is to violate AIGuy's null hypothesis. :-) (And please spare us the extended quotes and links; we can all read on the net. If you think you can mount an argument yourself please do so).
aiguy_{January 14, 2011
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aiguy I disagree with just about everything you wrote, but to one point in particular, let us be clear that computers are not 'intelligent': I wrote the following in response to this article on 'artificial intelligence' this morning: Computer could make 2 'Jeopardy!' champs deep blue http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-jeopardy-champs-deep-blue.html Sure the computer can recall massive amounts of information, and probably win at Jeopardy, but can it create the functional 'prescriptive' information that clearly sets transcendent intelligence (mind) apart from inanimate matter? LIFE’S CONSERVATION LAW - William Dembski - Robert Marks - Pg. 13 Excerpt:.,,, Information does not magically materialize. It can be created by intelligence or it can be shunted around by natural forces. But natural forces, and Darwinian pro...cesses in particular, do not create information. Active information enables us to see why this is the case. http://evoinfo.org/publications/lifes-conservation-law/ In other words, no one has ever seen purely material processes generate functional 'prescriptive' information. The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity: David L. Abel - Null Hypothesis For Information Generation - 2009 To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it: "Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration." A single exception of non trivial, unaided spontaneous optimization of formal function by truly natural process would falsify this null hypothesis. http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/pdf Can We Falsify Any Of The Following Null Hypothesis (For Information Generation) 1) Mathematical Logic 2) Algorithmic Optimization 3) Cybernetic Programming 4) Computational Halting 5) Integrated Circuits 6) Organization (e.g. homeostatic optimization far from equilibrium) 7) Material Symbol Systems (e.g. genetics) 8) Any Goal Oriented bona fide system 9) Language' 10) Formal function of any kind 11) Utilitarian work http://mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/ag The Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency - Dr David L. Abel - November 2010 Excerpt: “If decision-node programming selections are made randomly or by law rather than with purposeful intent, no non-trivial (sophisticated) function will spontaneously arise.”,,, After ten years of continual republication of the null hypothesis with appeals for falsification, no falsification has been provided. The time has come to extend this null hypothesis into a formal scientific prediction: “No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone.” http://www.scitopics.com/The_Law_of_Physicodynamic_Insufficiency.html The GS (genetic selection) Principle – David L. Abel – 2009 Excerpt: Stunningly, information has been shown not to increase in the coding regions of DNA with evolution. Mutations do not produce increased information. Mira et al (65) showed that the amount of coding in DNA actually decreases with evolution of bacterial genomes, not increases. This paper parallels Petrov’s papers starting with (66) showing a net DNA loss with Drosophila evolution (67). Konopka (68) found strong evidence against the contention of Subba Rao et al (69, 70) that information increases with mutations. The information content of the coding regions in DNA does not tend to increase with evolution as hypothesized. Konopka also found Shannon complexity not to be a suitable indicator of evolutionary progress over a wide range of evolving genes. Konopka’s work applies Shannon theory to known functional text. Kok et al. (71) also found that information does not increase in DNA with evolution. As with Konopka, this finding is in the context of the change in mere Shannon uncertainty. The latter is a far more forgiving definition of information than that required for prescriptive information (PI) (21, 22, 33, 72). It is all the more significant that mutations do not program increased PI. Prescriptive information either instructs or directly produces formal function. No increase in Shannon or Prescriptive information occurs in duplication. What the above papers show is that not even variation of the duplication produces new information, not even Shannon “information.” http://www.scitopics.com/The_GS_Principle_The_Genetic_Selection_Principle.html http://www.us.net/life/index.htm Dr. Don Johnson explains the difference between Shannon Information and Prescriptive Information, as well as explaining 'the cybernetic cut', in this following Podcast: Programming of Life - Dr. Donald Johnson interviewed by Casey Luskin - audio podcast http://www.idthefuture.com/2010/11/programming_of_life.html The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity - David L. Abel Excerpt: "To stem the growing swell of Intelligent Design intrusions, it is imperative that we provide stand-alone natural process evidence of non trivial self-organization at the edge of chaos. We must demonstrate on sound scientific grounds the formal capabilities of naturally-occurring physicodynamic complexity. Evolutionary algorithms, for example, must be stripped of all artificial selection and the purposeful steering of iterations toward desired products. The latter intrusions into natural process clearly violate sound evolution theory." http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/pdf Thus aiguy, all you, or anyone else, has to do is to violate Abel's null hypothesis.bornagain77_{January 14, 2011
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vjt,
I don’t regard computers (at least, current ones) as bona fide individuals...
So you believe that in addition to performing means-ends analysis and being capable of explaining their actions in language, in order to be an intelligent agent an entity must exhibit "dedicated functionality" and be "built from the bottom up". This wasn't clear from Dembski's definition, but you're the one providing the definition here, so that's fine. As I said before, definitions can be more or less useful, arbitrary, and meaningful, but they can't be wrong.
In addition, your references to computers as solving problems and explaining how they do so are based on an intentional stance which we choose to adopt when talking about computers, because it is convenient to do so. We could equally well explain how your computer produces the output it does without recourse to means-end terminology or intentional terms. We could explain everything a computer does at the electronic level, in a deterministic fashion.
You are implying that if something can be explained in terms of deterministic physics, then it cannot be "truly intentional", and if we use intentional idioms they are metaphorical. Three issues there: First, it's certainly not clear that determinism is incompatible with intentionality; second, not all computers are deterministic; and third, we do not know if humans transcend deterministic cause (or deterministic + random cause).
How do you know we can’t do that with people?” you might ask. Well, if you ever manage to show that human behavior when performing typical means-end tasks, and when justifying said performance, is deterministic at the physical level, then I’ll happily agree that there’s no behavioral difference between people and computers. But I have yet to see such a proof, and I would regard the assertion that one will soon be forthcoming as nothing more than “promissory materialism (to cite a phrase often used by Eccles).
You assume the burden of proof is to show humans are deterministic. But whether or not humans are deterministic is unknown, and there is no default assumption that ought to be accepted as true just because we can't demonstrate the case one way or the other. We simply do not know if human cognition and behavior relies on something that transcends physics. Some (most functionalists like Dennett) believe that classical physics is sufficient to account for mentality; some (like Penrose) believe that quantum effects are somehow involved, and some (like Chalmers) think that mentality requires something qualitatively different from the physical realm entirely (although there is the question of whether our mental abilities require non-physical cause or if it is just our phenomenal experience that requires it).
With human agents, unlike computers, the intentional stance is utterly indispensable when we are attempting to explain what they are doing: we have to postulate that they are following a rule, as a “guiding star” which renders intelligible everything that they are doing when accomplishing said tasks.
I think you're wrong here: It is impossible (even in principle) to explain what certain computer systems are doing at the level of electronics, for the same reason we cannot explain weather systems at the level of atomic interactions. So we use intentional idioms (and other abstractions) to talk about computer systems, and they are utterly indispensible. The same is true of human beings. So, our choice of using the intentional stance or not simply does not answer our metaphysical questions. It remains unknown if contra-causal powers of mind and free will exist in human beings or anywhere else.
(c) In any case, I could have sharpened my definition of “intelligent agent” by stipulating that any entity which is known to perform said tasks (means-end activity and subsequent justification) in a wholly deterministic fashion, and which is known to be the product of another entity (e.g. a human creator), shall be deemed a tool of the latter, provided that the latter is not known to perform said tasks in a deterministic fashion.
Yes, I'm very used to this. I ask endlessly for a definition of "intelligence", and people grumble that everyone knows what it means and there's no need for a definition. I point out that any scientific theory that uses "intelligent cause" as its sole explanatory concept really is obliged to say what that might mean in the context of the theory, and finally somebody deigns to take a crack at providing a meaningful definition. But as soon as we examine the implications of the definition and we see that it renders "ID Theory" either incoherent or completely impossible to judge against the evidence, ID proponents begin to add new stipulations and extensions, making up new definitions as they go along to counter these problems. So you started with Dembski's definition, and to that you have already added that intelligent agents must also be "built from the bottom up" and exhibit "dedicated functionality", and be able to justify their actions in language, and that they can't be "wholly deterministic" nor can they be "known to be the product of another entity" etc. I would suggest everyone ponder this: ID has had a very long time to come up with a canonical statement of its central theoretical claim. Between Meyer and Dembski and Wells and everyone else who writes and blogs and does "research" in ID, one would think that somebody, somewhere, would have said what "Intelligent Design" actually meant. Here you have chosen the definition that Bill Dembski, a famous and prominent ID theorist if there ever was one, committed to in his book. Yet you have had to immediately correct and amend his definition to account for the simple and obvious objections I've raised in a single post. These are not trivial changes; these are not just clarifications. The fact that you now insist that intelligence is incompatible with determinism, and that it can't be the product of another creator - these are substantive claims. And we have just started! (I've emphasized this because I'd like other readers to notice it).
As regards tasks, I agree with you that for any given operationally defined task (e.g. completing the Stanford Binet test; answering Jeopardy questions) a computer could be designed to perform it as well or better than a human. But that does not imply that a computer could, in principle, perform all of the tasks that a human can perform, as well as a human agent can. To affirm that would be to commit the fallacy of composition, which I discussed in an earlier post.
So? Not all humans can perform all the tasks that I can perform - does that make other humans not intelligent agents? Image a human being with cognitive deficits that prevent them from doing mathematics, or generating grammatical language, or coordinating movement... would you consider this person as something which is not an intelligent agent? I don't think you would (I hope not). So I think this argument is a non-starter too.
You seem to regard the essential difference between people and computers as consciousness. I have to say that this sounds a bit fuzzy to me. If a computer could do everything that I did as well as I can do it, then I’d be inclined to say that there’s no fundamental difference between it and me.
I may be inclined to that too - when they get there we'll see if that is what we conclude. There is no sure solution to the problem of other minds; we judge others based on behavior, so if we make a computer that acts sufficiently like a person (or even a dog, say) we probably will conclude that they have conscious experience - and we will have no way of knowing if we are right or wrong (unless perhaps we some day come up with a principled understanding of the necessary and sufficient physical correlates of consciousness in human brains).
In your previou posts, you’ve argued that we could never have adequate warrant for believing in a disembodied Designer, even if we could conceive of one. I’d like to address that claim.
No, I didn't argue that. I argued that in the context of ID (i.e. trying to explain cosmic fine-tuning, OOL, and high-CSI features of biology) we have no way of determining if the cause of these things matches your definition of intelligent agency.
First, we can conceive of a disembodied Designer.
Sure, but we can also conceive of an unknown natural process that generates CSI; that doesn't mean it exists. So this doesn't help either.
Second, we need to distinguish three kinds of inferences: inductive, abductive and deductive... The inductive argument that all the intelligent agents we’ve met so far are animals doesn’t over-ride my reasoning here, because abductive reasoning trumps merely inductive reasoning.
First, your assertion that abductive reasoning trumps inductive reasoning is groundless; there is no theory that quanitifies or orders our confidence in the result of these two types of inference, and obviously some inductions are very strong and some abductions are very weak. Second, the belief that intelligence requires complex mechanism is based on at least two types of evidence: A) We have a huge base of observations upon which to induce that intelligence arises invariably from complex physical information processing mechanisms like brains or computers, and B) we have theoretical justifications (including implications of Landauer's princple) for claiming that anything which processes information requires physical mechanism (and that all means-ends analysis requires exactly this sort of information processing, even if it is ultimately non-algorithmic!). I do not claim this evidence proves that disembodied intelligence is impossible of course - we simply don't know how minds work, or what consciousness is and what it does (or doesn't do), so we can't rule out that mind may exist in ways inconceivable to us now. But as far as our current understanding of intelligent agency goes, we cannot simply invoke disembodied agency as our explanation with any confidence whatsoever, since it violates both our uniform and repeated experience and our (very limited!!) theoretical understanding of intelligent agency.
I can go one level higher: deductive reasoning, which affords me absolute certainty. I can be absolutely certain that a program has to be written by a programmer. Dr. Don Johnson has argued in his book, The Programming of Life that there are programs inside the cell – and he’s speaking literally, not metaphorically. Since organic cellular life has not always existed in our universe, I reason that it must have emerged at some point, somewhere. If it requires programs to run, then I infer deductively that since only a programmer is capable of writing a program, an Invisible Programmer produced the first cellular life in our cosmos.
This is the worst of your arguments so far. Of course we cannot possibly know that "a program requires a programmer"! Aside from the fact that you have failed to define either of these terms (and that is no easy matter, especially for the latter!), you are up against nothing less than problems of arguments of first cause here. It is certainly hard to argue for a "program" existing eternally, or necessarily, or transcendentally, or popping into existence spontaneously. But it is no easier to argue for a "programmer" existing eternally, necessary, transcendentally, or emerging spontaneously. Recasting these ancient theological conundrums in modern terminology doesn't resolve them.
That’s just a short sketch of the reasoning I imply when inferring the existence of an Invisible Designer. I hope that helps make my position plainer.
I think I understand your position. Mine is simple: WE DO NOT KNOW.
By the way, the programming argument is meant to show why God doesn’t have to explain His methods to us for us to be warranted in inferring His existence. Presumably God could explain Himself to us if He wished; at present, however, He does not.
Maybe that's it. Or maybe He's a savant - He's really good at building interesting universes and life forms, but he is simply incapable of expressing His thoughts in language. Or maybe His mind is really different from ours and He doesn't have any conscious awareness of what He is doing at all (we know that human beings can do all sorts of complex cognitive tasks without conscious awareness - why couldn't He?). And on and on and on. In my view, God is a hypothesis which is full of anthropomorphic projections - explicit and implicit - that have no justifications at all (and really are unlikely to be true given what we know). The best description of God that I hear from religious folks is this: He is mysterious and unknowable and beyond our comprehension. That is the God that I believe in.aiguy_{January 14, 2011
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aiguy In your previou posts, you've argued that we could never have adequate warrant for believing in a disembodied Designer, even if we could conceive of one. I'd like to address that claim. First, we can conceive of a disembodied Designer. A designer is an intelligent agent, and as we've seen, nothing in my definition of "intelligent agent" requires that it be embodied. I stipulated that it had to be an individual. I didn't say "animal." I didn't even say "material object." Agency can be characterized in terms of its effects: means-end activity plus an ability to justify said activity, or explain why it was done that way (which presupposes a capacity for language). Incidentally, this capacity doesn't have to be exercised; most of the time, when I act, I don't say why I did it that way. The point is, however, that I could if I wanted to. Second, we need to distinguish three kinds of inferences: inductive, abductive and deductive. Abductive reasoning is another term for inference to the best explanation. It's stronger than merely inductive reasoning, but not as strong as deductive reasoning, which is ironclad, provided that the argument is sound. The observation that all the intelligent agents we've encountered to date are embodied animals (specifically, human beings) warrants the inductive inference that if I see a tool lying on the ground, probably a human being made it. However, if I encountered what appeared to be a very complex artefact in an undisturbed layer of rock dated at 500 million years old, I'd have to infer something different. If its structure was highly specific, and designed to do a particular task (e.g. add), I'd infer that it was made by an unknown species of intelligent being who visited the planet a long time ago. In making this inference, I'm relying on abductive reasoning: the amount of complex specified information in the artefact is so high that I can confidently rule out an origin by unintelligent natural processes. I'd have to infer that an intellgent agent made it - not just because I've never encountered an unintelligent natural process that could make such an artefact, but because I have strong reasons (based on probabilistic reasoning) for believing that the production of such an artefact by unintelligent natural processes is astronomically unlikely. This abductive reasoning therefore warrants me in inferring that an alien made the artefact. Now suppose that someone puts forward an argument, based on the amount of CSI required to specify the constants of nature precisely enough to allow life to emerge, that the universe itself requires a large amount of CSI to ensure that is hospitable for life. In other words, it appears that the universe is an artefact. Then I still have to assume that an intelligent agent made it, based on abductive reasoning. I can no longer ascribe it to an alien inside the universe, so I have to suppose that the universe is a put-up job, made by some Intelligence outside it. The inductive argument that all the intelligent agents we've met so far are animals doesn't over-ride my reasoning here, because abductive reasoning trumps merely inductive reasoning. I can go one level higher: deductive reasoning, which affords me absolute certainty. I can be absolutely certain that a program has to be written by a programmer. Dr. Don Johnson has argued in his book, The Programming of Life that there are programs inside the cell - and he's speaking literally, not metaphorically. Since organic cellular life has not always existed in our universe, I reason that it must have emerged at some point, somewhere. If it requires programs to run, then I infer deductively that since only a programmer is capable of writing a program, an Invisible Programmer produced the first cellular life in our cosmos. That's just a short sketch of the reasoning I imply when inferring the existence of an Invisible Designer. I hope that helps make my position plainer. By the way, the programming argument is meant to show why God doesn't have to explain His methods to us for us to be warranted in inferring His existence. Presumably God could explain Himself to us if He wished; at present, however, He does not.vjtorley_{January 14, 2011
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aiguy (#62) Thank you for your comments. I assumed, because of your remarks bout the need to operationalize scientific definitions, that you were a thoroughgoing operationalist. Evidently I misjudged you, and for that I apologize. Sorry for sounding a bit abrupt in my last post. Getting back to your comments about intelligent agents, you write:
I also have a little computer here that is able to find, select, adapt, and implement the means needed to effectively bring out ends or achieve goals and realize purposes, so apparently my computer is an intelligent agent – cool! I thought it was just a mindless unconscious machine deterministically doing what its physical structure makes it do, but now I know that it is intelligent in just the same way as Bill Dembski! ... By the way my computer here still qualifies as an intelligent agent, because it can not only perform means-ends problem solving but explain what it is doing in English too.
A few comments: (a) I also stipulated, "An intelligent agent is therefore an individual..." I don't regard computers (at least, current ones) as bona fide individuals, because the parts don't "hang together" the right way. They are designed to work together to achieve a stipulated goal, yes; but in a genuine individual, each and every operation of the parts, from the tiniest micro-component to the largest part, is dedicated to the proper functioning of the whole. This is a property sometimes known as dedicated functionality. A computer would have to be built from the bottom up (and not just from the top down) before it could be legitimately termed an individual. (b) In addition, your references to computers as solving problems and explaining how they do so are based on an intentional stance which we choose to adopt when talking about computers, because it is convenient to do so. We could equally well explain how your computer produces the output it does without recourse to means-end terminology or intentional terms. We could explain everything a computer does at the electronic level, in a deterministic fashion. "How do you know we can't do that with people?" you might ask. Well, if you ever manage to show that human behavior when performing typical means-end tasks, and when justifying said performance, is deterministic at the physical level, then I'll happily agree that there's no behavioral difference between people and computers. But I have yet to see such a proof, and I would regard the assertion that one will soon be forthcoming as nothing more than "promissory materialism" (to cite a phrase often used by Eccles). With human agents, unlike computers, the intentional stance is utterly indispensable when we are attempting to explain what they are doing: we have to postulate that they are following a rule, as a "guiding star" which renders intelligible everything that they are doing when accomplishing said tasks. (c) In any case, I could have sharpened my definition of "intelligent agent" by stipulating that any entity which is known to perform said tasks (means-end activity and subsequent justification) in a wholly deterministic fashion, and which is known to be the product of another entity (e.g. a human creator), shall be deemed a tool of the latter, provided that the latter is not known to perform said tasks in a deterministic fashion. (d) As regards tasks, I agree with you that for any given operationally defined task (e.g. completing the Stanford Binet test; answering Jeopardy questions) a computer could be designed to perform it as well or better than a human. But that does not imply that a computer could, in principle, perform all of the tasks that a human can perform, as well as a human agent can. To affirm that would be to commit the fallacy of composition, which I discussed in an earlier post. (e) You seem to regard the essential difference between people and computers as consciousness. I have to say that this sounds a bit fuzzy to me. If a computer could do everything that I did as well as I can do it, then I'd be inclined to say that there's no fundamental difference between it and me. As a humorous example, consider the following case. Imagine for argument's sake that you're single. You meet a fascinating, charming lady who shares the same interests you do and can discourse at length about topics that are important to you. She is also passionate about the things that interest her - she's heavily involved in local groups, belongs to several clubs and is active in community work - in short, she's anything but a cerebral nerd. But one day, you make a horrifying discovery - she's not conscious. She's a robot. I imagine you would want to break off the relationship at this point, but would you say hello to her if you met her in the street? And would you warn her to get out of the way if you saw a truck hurtling towards her? Got to run now. I'll get back to ID in my next post.vjtorley_{January 13, 2011
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vjt,
Why didn’t you declare in your very first post that you were an operationalist? That could have saved us all a lot of time and trouble, as we’ve been talking past each other.
You folks here are pretty funny! If you can't fit somebody into one "ism" or another you just don't know how to discuss anything at all!
I hate to have to break this to you, but operationalism has been widely discredited in philosophical circles for about 50 years now.
I hate to break this to you, but you aren't breaking anything to me. I'm not an operationalist, nor is any scientist I know.
AIGUY: Let us operationalize ‘intelligence’, shall we? ‘Intelligence’ is the ability to score over 70 on a Stanford-Binet IQ test, administered with a #2 pencil and a Scantron form. OK? Intentionality is a bit harder, but the beauty of operationalized definitions is that they cannot be wrong… by definition! VJT: Cannot be wrong“? As my lecturer used to say when we were studying Wittgenstein’s private language argument at university, if you can’t get it wrong, you can’t get it right either. Your definition of intelligence is precise, but arbitrary. What makes it better (or worse) than a definition based on the Wechsler test, for instance?
OF COURSE that definition is arbitrary! Moreover, is a perfectly useless definition outside of a very narrow context. That was of course my point to null. However, it is in no way wrong... by definition!
Incidentally, I can now see why you don’t think there’s a hard-and-fast difference between people and computers. If all we do is perform “operations”, then of course there isn’t.
No, I'm afraid you're wrong again: I think there is a huge difference between people and computers. For one thing, I believe human beings experience conscious awareness and computers do not! You folks just can't deal with anyone who disagrees with you but isn't a materialist, reductionist, instrumentalist, operationalist, functionalist, or some other -ist who you love to hate :-) Sorry, but you're not arguing against me either, vjt. You need to find somebody else to debate if these are the arguments you want to use.
In reality, your own discourse fails to live up to the lofty standards you have set for null and for me. You claim that “in science every explanatory construct must be operationalized.” Rubbish! What about a law of nature? What about a wave function? What about an atom? What about natural selection? What about sexual selection? What about a meme?
But of course our characterizations of the laws of nature are operationalized. That is why they are scientific - they are characterized precisely in terms of how to test their effects! Let's take an easy one - Newton's laws of motion or gravity. Do I need to explain to you how these laws are fully operationalized? I will if you'd like. A wave function is not an explanatory construct per se. Atoms are, and they are operationalized by describing them (with, among other things, wave functions) in ways that can be measured. Natural selection is easily operationalized (you can measure differential reproduction and heritable traits). Same with sexual selection. I don't think a "meme" is a good scientific explanatory construct, so let's not talk about those.
Let’s see you operationalize some of your own terms. Operationalize “computer.” Operationalize “meaning.” Operationalize “explain.” Operationalize “consciousness.” Operationalize “operation.” Operationalize “behavior.” Operationalize “science.”
And let's see you show me where I have ever used any of these terms as explanatory constructs in a scientific theory! Oh yeah - you can't, because I haven't. If I was an operationalist I would insist on operational definitions anyway.... but I'm not.
Anyway, if you want a definition of “intelligence”, then I’ll give it to you.
Yay!
intelligence A type of cause, process or principle that is able to find, select, adapt, and implement the means needed to effectively bring about ends (or achieve goals or realize purposes). Because intelligence is about matching means to ends, it is inherently teleological.
Ok then! Excellent, thank you! Now, how do I decide what things are intelligent and what things are not? I have something sitting in the next room and I'd like to know if it is intelligent - please tell me how to figure that out. I also have a little computer here that is able to find, select, adapt, and implement the means needed to effectively bring out ends or achieve goals and realize purposes, so apparently my computer is an intelligent agent - cool! I thought it was just a mindless unconscious machine deterministically doing what its physical structure makes it do, but now I know that it is intelligent in just the same way as Bill Dembski!
An intelligent agent is therefore an individual using a means to attain an end, who is capable of justifying his performance of the operation, by explaining how his chosen means helps him attain the end he seeks. (I would add that the explanation has to be given in some sort of language.)
Really? In that case I'm wrong about ID - it is most definitely testable! All you need to do now is get the Designer to solve some novel problems and then explain how His chosen means helps Him attain the end He seeks, and I'll be a True Believer! By the way my computer here still qualifies as an intelligent agent, because it can not only perform means-ends problem solving but explain what it is doing in English too. Meanwhile, this thing in the next room seems to be building all sorts of highly complex functional machinery... oooh it just created a 3D television set from raw materials! - but I still don't know if it is intelligent because I can't give it any novel problems to solve or ask it to justify its actions...
And no, don’t ask me to define “individual”. I don’t play games. Some terms have to be treated as basic.
Yes, most terms are basic. I don't play games either.
The reason why I haven’t chosen to define “individual” as “organism” or “animal” for instance, is that there is nothing in the definition of “means” or “end” that requires the entity attaining the end by some means, to be an animal. “Individual” is, and should be, an open-ended term.
Yes of course - no problem.
And if you want an operational definition of “goal”, “purpose”, “means” and “end”, then I’m not going to play ball. To demand that is just ridiculous. One has to stop somewhere, when providing definitions.
You are absolutely right. None of these terms is problematic (with the possible exception of "purpose" or "purposeful" which for some people seems to carry a connotation of conscious awareness of purpose, but let's let that go).
You wanted a definition, and I gave you one. The ball’s in your court.
Yes you did give me definitions and I appreciate the effort. Now I hope you can see that in the context of ID theory you have no hope of demonstrating the existence of anything that actually matches your definition which designed flagella and eyeballs and the radius of the proton.aiguy_{January 13, 2011
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aiguy (#39, #41, #47) Why didn't you declare in your very first post that you were an operationalist? That could have saved us all a lot of time and trouble, as we've been talking past each other. You wrote (to null, #39):
Make no mistake: Every paper that invokes "intelligence" as an explanation of anything provides operationalized definitions, or it does not get published in a reputable journal. Why? Because in science every explanatory construct must be operationalized. This should be obvious to you.
I hate to have to break this to you, but operationalism has been widely discredited in philosophical circles for about 50 years now. If you look at the article on Operationalism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy you'll quickly realize that it's a theory attended by severe philosophical problems. Here are just a few (with selected quotes from the article): 1. Operational definitions do not exhaust meaning. "The entire world can agree to define length by the standard meter in Paris (or by the wavelength of a certain atomic radiation), and that still comes nowhere near exhausting all that we mean by length." Moreover, "if we accept the most extreme kind of operationalism, there is no point in asking whether a measurement method is valid; if the measurement method defines the concept and there is nothing more to the meaning of the concept, the measurement method is automatically valid, as a matter of convention or even tautology" (emphasis mine - VJT). 2. Operational definitions are not required for all useful concepts "If operationalism means demanding that every concept and every inferential step should have an immediate operational significance, it constitutes an overly restrictive empiricism... The crux of the problem here for the operationalist is that theoretical concepts are much too useful in science. Bridgman actually acknowledged from early on that there were good theoretical concepts that were not amenable to direct operationalization, illustrating the point with the example of stress and strain inside a solid body (1927, 53–54), and the wavefunction in quantum mechanics (Bridgman in Frank 1956, 79)... "For [Bridgman], the initial position to take was that if there are different methods of measurement we have different concepts, as he said about 'tactual' and 'optical' length being two different concepts. Bridgman's ambivalence about conceptual unity elicited a serious worry about the systematic import of scientific concepts and theories, most astutely expressed by Hempel (1966, 91–97). Bridgman's skeptical caution would result in an intolerable fragmentation of science, Hempel argued. It would result in 'a proliferation of concepts of length, of temperature, and of all other scientific concepts that would not only be practically unmanageable, but theoretically endless.'" 3. What are operations? "Apart from the questions of whether operational definitions are sufficient or necessary, it is actually unclear what types of things operations are, and how they should be specified... Bridgman himself was troubled by the question regarding the nature of operations and admitted late in his life that he had not really provided 'an analysis of what it is that makes an operation suitable', or 'in what terms can operations be specified' (Bridgman in Frank 1956, 77)." 4. Are operations private or public? "...Bridgman was insistent that operations were a matter for private experience. He could see no warrant in simply taking someone else's testimony as true or reliable, or in regarding the report of an operation performed by someone else as the same kind of thing as an operation performed and experienced by himself." Now can you recognize the philosophical naivete of your remark, addressed to null (#47):
Let us operationalize 'intelligence', shall we? 'Intelligence' is the ability to score over 70 on a Stanford-Binet IQ test, administered with a #2 pencil and a Scantron form. OK? Intentionality is a bit harder, but the beauty of operationalized definitions is that they cannot be wrong... by definition!
"Cannot be wrong"? As my lecturer used to say when we were studying Wittgenstein's private language argument at university, if you can't get it wrong, you can't get it right either. Your definition of intelligence is precise, but arbitrary. What makes it better (or worse) than a definition based on the Wechsler test, for instance? Incidentally, I can now see why you don't think there's a hard-and-fast difference between people and computers. If all we do is perform "operations", then of course there isn't. In reality, your own discourse fails to live up to the lofty standards you have set for null and for me. You claim that "in science every explanatory construct must be operationalized." Rubbish! What about a law of nature? What about a wave function? What about an atom? What about natural selection? What about sexual selection? What about a meme? Let's see you operationalize some of your own terms. Operationalize "computer." Operationalize "meaning." Operationalize "explain." Operationalize "consciousness." Operationalize "operation." Operationalize "behavior." Operationalize "science." Anyway, if you want a definition of "intelligence", then I'll give it to you. Here's an excerpt from The Design of Life (Dembski & Wells, 2008, p. 315):
intelligence A type of cause, process or principle that is able to find, select, adapt, and implement the means needed to effectively bring about ends (or achieve goals or realize purposes). Because intelligence is about matching means to ends, it is inherently teleological.
Dembski & Wells don't provide a definition of agency in their book, but it could be defined broadly as any kind of operation, more narrowly as an operation that helps an individual attain an end by some means; and in its narrowest sense, as as an operation that helps an individual attain an end by some means, where the individual is capable of justifying his performance of the operation, by explaining how his chosen means helps him attain the end he seeks. On a broad definition, the sun's shining is a form of agency; on a narrower definition, agency would be confined to living things (not necessarily conscious ones); and on the narrowest definition, only to conscious rational beings. An intelligent agent is therefore an individual using a means to attain an end, who is capable of justifying his performance of the operation, by explaining how his chosen means helps him attain the end he seeks. (I would add that the explanation has to be given in some sort of language.) And no, don't ask me to define "individual". I don't play games. Some terms have to be treated as basic. The reason why I haven't chosen to define "individual" as "organism" or "animal" for instance, is that there is nothing in the definition of "means" or "end" that requires the entity attaining the end by some means, to be an animal. "Individual" is, and should be, an open-ended term. And if you want an operational definition of "goal", "purpose", "means" and "end", then I'm not going to play ball. To demand that is just ridiculous. One has to stop somewhere, when providing definitions. I hope this answers your objection:
The concept of agency is used in philosophy (usually moral philosophy, sometimes philosophy of mind) or sometimes in fields like sociology. In those fields agency is discussed deeply: What is an agent? What distinguishes agents from non-agents? Do agents, according to some particular definition, exist or not? In contrast, "ID Theory" uses the term without clarification or qualification. Worse still, ID invokes this notion as an explanation for observed phenomena. This renders ID specious, unscientific, meaningless, and really annoying.
You wanted a definition, and I gave you one. The ball's in your court.vjtorley_{January 13, 2011
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Onlookers, cf 46 above [and various other posts by various people], to see what AIG is skipping over to make his talking points. Gkairosfocus_{January 13, 2011
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above,
Your claim that such things did not provide a shred of evidence for ancient theological ideas as you put it, is patently wrong, if not downright dishonest.
Downright dishonest? Ouch! I can always tell when I hit a nerve :-)
Maybe those theologians were on to something, no?
No, I don't think so.
So unless of course you want to indulge into the delusion that just because an idea is older than some other it is by implication inferior, then I see no grounds of how you can deny the blatantly obvious.
If theism were "blatantly obvious" then everybody would agree about it. What is blatantly obvious is that not all smart reasonable people do agree about it, so calling your particular take on these questions "blatantly obvious" seems wrong.
You can of course, as you have tried to do, suggest other alternatives. Simulations? Self-organizing magical universe?
You misunderstand completely (honestly I don't think you read my posts very carefully). I am not suggesting these as alternative explanations of anything; I was pointing out one really does need to provide empirical evidence for a theory in order to justify it scientifically, and simply attacking some other theory isn't enough. People in ID often set up a false dichotomy. In effect they are saying "Either the universe (or life or certain features thereof...) was created by a conscious rational being, or it was created by blind unguided forces. Therefore if we show that blind unguided forces couldn't manage it, it must be agency (or a god, etc). I do not believe we have any idea how the universe came to exist, whether it has always existed, if there are more than one of them, why our universe looks as it does, and so on. I am not a materialist, so I do not believe that our current understanding of physics accounts for any of this, or for conscious awareness either. But neither do I believe that invoking "intelligent agency" or "God" constitutes a meaningful and justified explanation of these things, because these concepts are not sufficiently well characterized to judge against the evidence (essentially they are the same as saying "something that can do anything", and that is not specific enough to judge against the evidence).
You start off by presupposing materialism (neutral monism is not really that far from it if that’s what you believe so…).
If you'd like to discuss this with me, I suggest that you tell me what you think and I tell you what I think. If you tell me what I think we're really not going to get very far here. Neutral monism is farther away from materialism than ID is from Creationism, certainly, but I am not even particularly wed to the label of neutral monism either. My stance is that consciousness is a hard problem, and that we cannot yet account for fine-tuning or the origin of biological complexity, and that neutral monism is merely a way of expressing that ontology is unknown (and perhaps unknowable) without multiplying our mysteries by opting for dualism.
Now as you know, given substance dualism the mind is distinct from the body so your whole CSI counter-argument fails for it refers to the body and not the mind. Only if you conflate them – as you always seem to do – can you make the argument and even that doesn’t take you that far. In short, dualism defeats your argument.
First, if dualism defeated my argument then we would be in the same situation, because we do not know if dualism is true or not. But dualism does not defeat my argument, because dualism per se does not hold that res extensa is superfluous to mental function - it only holds that res cogitans is necessary.
Intimately tied to this is again, an un-argued reductionism that attempts to link mind and body in a unified substratum as so for you to be able to launch the argument.
This is ridiculous - you haven't read what I wrote. If you wish to continue, you'll need to quote me (the way I do with you) so you can address what I am saying instead of the straw men you want to argue against.
Without it, your argument falls apart for if dualism is true and mind and body are ontologically distinct then you have said nothing at all.
What I have said is that every intelligent agent in our experience requires complex mechanism in order to exhibit intelligent behaviors. Since you have no response to this simple, undeniable, perfectly true observation, you sweep it under the rug and change the subject to argue against materialism and reductionism, which nobody is arguing here.
So once again, comes the dogmatic presupposition to the rescue. I should also mention another underlying assumption that seems to flow from your arguments, namely the type of causal connections you appear to accept are themselves reductionistic. This is especially evident in your hostile treatment of anything not materialistic (mentalistic as you call it). To not allow for any sui generis reality to me is so misconstrued and unrealistic that it must be abandoned. Maybe you should read what Roger Sperry said about the matter.
Sorry, but this is all total nonsense. If you bothered to read and quote my posts you would see that you are arguing against somebody else, not me. It's really quite extraordinary.
Finally, the third prong of your argument is again, an unwarranted commitment to verificationism. Now as I have said before, verificationism has not only been dead for some time now, it is also self-refuting when taken to its logical conclusion, just like reductionism and materialism. So then, is your neutral monism / materialism verifiable? Have you verified it yourself? What direct observation do you have to support such a premise? None, because it’s a metaphysical position. What about reductionism? Can you verify reductionism? Of course not! You see how if scrutinized, your commitments end up annihilating one another?
If you actually scrutinized my comments we might be able to discuss them. As it is, you seem to be addressing somebody else. I have not argued for materialism, reductionism, or verificationism. I have said that scientific explanatory constructs need to be operationalized and verified against experience, but that is obviously not the same as verificationism. If you disagree, can you tell us what (if anything) you believe might distinguish scientific results from any other type of belief?
You keep speaking of operationalizing and such and the only reasonable understanding I can extract, given the topic, is that you’re only interested in how all this can be applied to practical matters, namely technology.
Again I would suggest that if you'd like to know what I am actually saying, you need to read what I actually write. As it is, pretty much everything you attribute to me is wrong.
So in sum, if you’re arguing for ontology, all you’ve managed to do is refute yourself. If you’re arguing for instrumentalism then there really is no issue at hand.
I am not arguing for a particular ontology. I am not arguing for instrumentalism. My position (as I've made clear many times in this thread and many others) is probably best described as "mysterianism", but specifically the point I make here is that there is no good reason to think that whatever created these features of the universe and life had the sort of mental characteristics that we know subjectively as embodied human beings.aiguy_{January 13, 2011
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@aiguy I’m going to start off by addressing the issue of design and indicate how your argument fails; at least the way you explicated it in reference to the order observed in the physical constants and in life. Your claim that such things did not provide a shred of evidence for ancient theological ideas as you put it, is patently wrong, if not downright dishonest. What modern science has done is corroborate such ideas beyond even our wildest imagination. As astrophysicist Rober Jestrow once put it: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” Rather telling isn’t it? Maybe those theologians were on to something, no? ? So unless of course you want to indulge into the delusion that just because an idea is older than some other it is by implication inferior, then I see no grounds of how you can deny the blatantly obvious. You can of course, as you have tried to do, suggest other alternatives. Simulations? Self-organizing magical universe? But have a look and see which of these are intellectually defensible – especially in considering reality in its entirety – and you will find very little if anything at all. At any rate, a simulation needs a simulator, a self-organizing universe is either magical or would itself need to be designed as so to self-organize (for it would be even more impossible than the non-self-organizing one). Not to mention issues such as contingency, the nature of causality, the reality of immateriality etc, which would make such so-called alternatives even weaker as explanatory principles. So despite what you chose to believe, such scientific findings not only provide evidence for the ancient theologian’s thesis but provide more than he could even wish for! Now let’s go ahead and deconstruct your typical argument to uncover the hidden presuppositions I mentioned before. You start off by presupposing materialism (neutral monism is not really that far from it if that’s what you believe so…). This is something I told you about in the past as well. The force of your argument lies on an un-argued materialistic / monistic presupposition. I gave you the example of an engineer in the past and explained to you that when an engineer is constructing something - given dualism - what you are observing is the mind’s creative activity. The physical impressions that hit your retina have as an efficient cause the immaterial mind. Given our limitations as humans we see the mind’s creative action via an instantiation through the physical body. Now as you know, given substance dualism the mind is distinct from the body so your whole CSI counter-argument fails for it refers to the body and not the mind. Only if you conflate them – as you always seem to do – can you make the argument and even that doesn’t take you that far. In short, dualism defeats your argument. Intimately tied to this is again, an un-argued reductionism that attempts to link mind and body in a unified substratum as so for you to be able to launch the argument. But that too fails. As willard quine put it in his book the two dogmas of empiricism (something your perspective heavily relies on) reductionism is “a metaphysical article of faith”. Without it, your argument falls apart for if dualism is true and mind and body are ontologically distinct then you have said nothing at all. So once again, comes the dogmatic presupposition to the rescue. I should also mention another underlying assumption that seems to flow from your arguments, namely the type of causal connections you appear to accept are themselves reductionistic. This is especially evident in your hostile treatment of anything not materialistic (mentalistic as you call it). To not allow for any sui generis reality to me is so misconstrued and unrealistic that it must be abandoned. Maybe you should read what Roger Sperry said about the matter. Finally, the third prong of your argument is again, an unwarranted commitment to verificationism. Now as I have said before, verificationism has not only been dead for some time now, it is also self-refuting when taken to its logical conclusion, just like reductionism and materialism. So then, is your neutral monism / materialism verifiable? Have you verified it yourself? What direct observation do you have to support such a premise? None, because it’s a metaphysical position. What about reductionism? Can you verify reductionism? Of course not! You see how if scrutinized, your commitments end up annihilating one another? Much of your argument reminds me of hume in fact. And we all know how that went down, when it was shown that if upheld his skepticism undermines much of science as it does religion. Speaking of, in the past I gave you several examples such postulates of science that would be destroyed given your stringent criteria, but it seems that was to no avail. The sole alleviating factor for you here would be the possibility that all this arguing you are engaged in is not so much directed at anything specific such as Theism but simply an expression of your desire for some sort of instrumentalist approach. You keep speaking of operationalizing and such and the only reasonable understanding I can extract, given the topic, is that you’re only interested in how all this can be applied to practical matters, namely technology. If your whole argument is not directed at ontology, but is simply an attempt to apply certain concepts instrumentally – if that is what you mean by operationalizing – then I’m afraid you and I have no axe to grind and we’ve been simply arguing over a misapprehension. So in sum, if you’re arguing for ontology, all you’ve managed to do is refute yourself. If you’re arguing for instrumentalism then there really is no issue at hand.above_{January 13, 2011
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null,
‘This thing has derived intentionality’, possibly false. ‘There is no original intentionality’, incoherent. Off into woo-woo eliminative materialist magic land.
Perhaps false but I don't think incoherent at all.
Why would I link intentionality with either? Non-conscious things can exhibit intrinsic ‘aboutness’ or intentionality of a sort.
That's your take; others disagree.
Yes, a narrative. A story. An ultimately useful fiction, except one that has no ‘real’ meaning, because ‘real’ meaning isn’t available.
I disagree; meaning is real, just not intrinsic.
I have no doubt that you can ascribe derived intentionality to computers, or maps for that matter.
We can but don't ascribe intentionality to maps, because maps do not have complex behaviors.
Again, you’re imputing a motive to the computer – ‘behaviors consistent with’. But it’s not actually ‘trying to do that’. That’s derived intentionality for you. A useful way of talking, a nice fiction. Accent on the fiction.
We disagree. I impute nothing to the computer, but choose to adopt the intentional stance because it is an appropriate level of abstraction to describe its behavior.
No, meaning of words being in the mind of the beholder would be a claim of original intentionality.
No, because I do not think minds are qualitatively different from any other system we're talking about in the context of intentionality. I do not believe that minds confer intentionality upon things; I believe that they confer meaning.
The beholder’s mind isn’t home to meaning either if one denies original intentionality in humans.
Yes I think it is.
And if all intentionality is derived, there is no actual ‘home’ to meaning.
No one home; lots of homes. Computers can also confer meaning upon things.
It’s roughly analogous to pointing at a length of pipe and saying ‘That’s where water comes from’, then the length attached to it and saying ‘And that part brings the water to that pipe’ until you get to the end, and it’s connected to nothing. You haven’t shown where water’s coming from. You’re showing that there’s no water coming.
In your analogy, there is no water.
I mean what I said above. Go by your own standard – ‘the idea that all things can be grounded in our current understanding of physics’. Given that said understanding has changed radically at multiple times in the past, it means ‘materialism’ has failed repeatedly. To say ‘I think the physical can explain everything! I don’t know what the physical will turn out to be’ though is an exercise in Deepak-worthy comedy.
Yes, and just as funny is the dualist who says "I know there is something besides the physical (although I don't know what the physical is either)... and I don't know what that something else is either!" That is exactly why I am a neutral monist. I am certain our comprehension of ontology is faulty and incomplete and it cannot account for consciousness, but do not pretend to know what could account for it, and see no advantage in multiplying mysteries.
I think some people are uncomfortable not knowing, but not everyone.
Most.
ID proponents admit outright that while they make inferences, said inferences may turn out to be incorrect. Other people make inferences with the same stipulation. Are you a mysterian if you say ‘I make an inference, but I don’t claim said inference is the absolute truth’?
No, you're not. You are a mysterian if you say "We do not know". Just because scientists and IDists say their conclusions are tentative doesn't change the fact that they think their conclusions are justified as true (i.e. they represent knowledge). A mysterian denies that we are justified in believing one thing or another. See - I don't think you are comfortable with mysterianism either!aiguy_{January 13, 2011
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aiguy, You’ve shifted from an accusation of incoherency to falsity? 'This thing has derived intentionality', possibly false. 'There is no original intentionality', incoherent. Off into woo-woo eliminative materialist magic land. In any case, whether or not intentional idioms are true obviously depends on what you think they mean (e.g. if you think they entail consciousness or libertarianism). Why would I link intentionality with either? Non-conscious things can exhibit intrinsic 'aboutness' or intentionality of a sort. Not really; it means that intentionality is a way of constructing coherent narratives about complex behavior at a high level of abstraction. Yes, a narrative. A story. An ultimately useful fiction, except one that has no 'real' meaning, because 'real' meaning isn't available. No. When you say a computer is “trying” to do something, you can well mean that it is performing certain behaviors consistent with carrying out the task, but the task remains uncompleted. I have no doubt that you can ascribe derived intentionality to computers, or maps for that matter. Again, you're imputing a motive to the computer - 'behaviors consistent with'. But it's not actually 'trying to do that'. That's derived intentionality for you. A useful way of talking, a nice fiction. Accent on the fiction. No, it means that there is nothing intrinsic about P that makes P represent Q. The meaning of P (the notion that it is about Q) is a property of something else which is apprehending P and Q. It is not that words have no meaning; it is rather that the meaning of words are in the mind of the beholder. No, meaning of words being in the mind of the beholder would be a claim of original intentionality. The beholder's mind isn't home to meaning either if one denies original intentionality in humans. And if all intentionality is derived, there is no actual 'home' to meaning. It's roughly analogous to pointing at a length of pipe and saying 'That's where water comes from', then the length attached to it and saying 'And that part brings the water to that pipe' until you get to the end, and it's connected to nothing. You haven't shown where water's coming from. You're showing that there's no water coming. Well, I suppose the reasonable interpretation would be that materialism is the idea that all explanations can be grounded in our current understanding of physics. I am not a materialist under any of these interpretations. If that's materialism, and there's nothing to note about how many times this has proven to be false, there's a problem. I don’t blame him for knocking materialism, but for knocking it with a really dumb argument. Anyway, which materialists are you thinking of when you say they pretend it means what it did the past… you are speaking of anyone who denies QM plays a role in thought or something? I mean what I said above. Go by your own standard - 'the idea that all things can be grounded in our current understanding of physics'. Given that said understanding has changed radically at multiple times in the past, it means 'materialism' has failed repeatedly. To say 'I think the physical can explain everything! I don't know what the physical will turn out to be' though is an exercise in Deepak-worthy comedy. None. I am always amazed and fascinated that the vast majority of people find it inconceivable that one can accept “We do not know” as an answer. There have been many times on these boards when people actually say “But you must take one side or the other!” or simply assume (like above does in this thread) that I’m a materialist/evolutionist just because I attack ID. People just don’t know how to deal with mysterianism; they absolutely hate that I can be comfortable with not knowing, and insist that deep down inside I must want one thing or another to be true. It really is quite bizarre; I don’t understand it. I think some people are uncomfortable not knowing, but not everyone. ID proponents admit outright that while they make inferences, said inferences may turn out to be incorrect. Other people make inferences with the same stipulation. Are you a mysterian if you say 'I make an inference, but I don't claim said inference is the absolute truth'?nullasalus_{January 13, 2011
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null,
AIGUY: I see no question of coherency at all. In fact, intentional language helps us construct coherent narratives about complex behavior at a high level of abstraction. NULL: So do plenty of other useful fictions. They don’t cease being fictions just because they’re useful.
You've shifted from an accusation of incoherency to falsity? Hmmm. In any case, whether or not intentional idioms are true obviously depends on what you think they mean (e.g. if you think they entail consciousness or libertarianism).
In fact you can put consciousness entirely aside – there’s no difference between saying all intentionality is derived and saying there is no intentionality at all.
Not really; it means that intentionality is a way of constructing coherent narratives about complex behavior at a high level of abstraction.
Further, saying that ‘all intentionality is derived’ means that no, a computer or machine actually isn’t ‘trying to do anything’ on its own – you’re imputing that motive to it.
No. When you say a computer is "trying" to do something, you can well mean that it is performing certain behaviors consistent with carrying out the task, but the task remains uncompleted.
That’s pretty much what it means for intentionality to be derived – there is no ‘fact of the matter’ what someone or something means. If all of your intentionality is derived, the same holds – in which case, your words here don’t ‘really mean’ anything. Heck, there aren’t even ‘real words’ to speak of.
No, it means that there is nothing intrinsic about P that makes P represent Q. The meaning of P (the notion that it is about Q) is a property of something else which is apprehending P and Q. It is not that words have no meaning; it is rather that the meaning of words are in the mind of the beholder.
The alternative is to say that ‘materialism’ is a fairly recent philosophical innovation, because the pre-20th century iterations (and thus, the pre-20th century materialists) turned out to be dead wrong.
Well, I suppose the reasonable interpretation would be that materialism is the idea that all explanations can be grounded in our current understanding of physics. I am not a materialist under any of these interpretations.
Deepak has many faults, but people can hardly be blamed for knocking materialism as such when numerous proponents like to pretend ‘materialism’ today means anything close to what it meant in the past.
I don't blame him for knocking materialism, but for knocking it with a really dumb argument. Anyway, which materialists are you thinking of when you say they pretend it means what it did the past... you are speaking of anyone who denies QM plays a role in thought or something?
On pain of having to focus on the ‘actually, some fundamental ideas turned out incorrect, or we’ve lost faith in them’ parts.
So you think there are materialists who are embarassed by the discoveries of QM and Relativity because they disconfirmed Newton? Really? That's weird. Who are you thinking of?
On the flipside, there’s also the charge that many ‘materialist’ philosophers want to pretend that 19th century physics remains, and that any changes since then are easily forgotten.
Seriously? Who are you talking about?
How many well-known mysterians are you aware of on these questions? Do you even need a hand to count them?
None. I am always amazed and fascinated that the vast majority of people find it inconceivable that one can accept "We do not know" as an answer. There have been many times on these boards when people actually say "But you must take one side or the other!" or simply assume (like above does in this thread) that I'm a materialist/evolutionist just because I attack ID. People just don't know how to deal with mysterianism; they absolutely hate that I can be comfortable with not knowing, and insist that deep down inside I must want one thing or another to be true. It really is quite bizarre; I don't understand it.aiguy_{January 13, 2011
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aiguy, I see no question of coherency at all. In fact, intentional language helps us construct coherent narratives about complex behavior at a high level of abstraction. So do plenty of other useful fictions. They don't cease being fictions just because they're useful. I went on to say that for anyone who objects to using intentional idioms to describe cars or word processors, claiming that machines don’t really want, try, or know anything, their objection is based on the (implicit or explicit) commitment that bona-fide intentionality requires conscious awareness. I understand that many philosophers would disagree, and argue that original vs. derived intentionality entails more than conscious awareness… but I think we’re getting a bit deep here. It goes beyond consciousness. In fact you can put consciousness entirely aside - there's no difference between saying all intentionality is derived and saying there is no intentionality at all. Further, saying that 'all intentionality is derived' means that no, a computer or machine actually isn't 'trying to do anything' on its own - you're imputing that motive to it. That's pretty much what it means for intentionality to be derived - there is no 'fact of the matter' what someone or something means. If all of your intentionality is derived, the same holds - in which case, your words here don't 'really mean' anything. Heck, there aren't even 'real words' to speak of. And of course I do too. The funniest take on this confusion is this: People attack materialism by first defining “materialism” as “the belief that everything is explicable by 19th century physics”… then they proceed to point out that 19th century physics cannot explain everything! Really funny (I’ve seen Deepak Chopra do this for example). The alternative is to say that 'materialism' is a fairly recent philosophical innovation, because the pre-20th century iterations (and thus, the pre-20th century materialists) turned out to be dead wrong. Deepak has many faults, but people can hardly be blamed for knocking materialism as such when numerous proponents like to pretend 'materialism' today means anything close to what it meant in the past. On pain of having to focus on the 'actually, some fundamental ideas turned out incorrect, or we've lost faith in them' parts. On the flipside, there's also the charge that many 'materialist' philosophers want to pretend that 19th century physics remains, and that any changes since then are easily forgotten. That is why I argue for mysterianism, rather than taking one side or the other to even the score (or achieve consistency by multiplying errors). How many well-known mysterians are you aware of on these questions? Do you even need a hand to count them?nullasalus_{January 12, 2011
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above
AIGUY: “Now, here’s one for you: “AIGuy claims that each and every instance of intelligent agency requires CSI exceeding a 500 bit threshold”. Has any IDist produced any evidence to refute that?” ABOVE: Without materialism your example is null.
Materialism has absolutely nothing to do with my question. It really is quite simple: Just tell us one single example of something that you consider an example of "intelligent agency" that is not a complex physical organism containing a huge amount of CSI. That's all you have to do! Can you do it? No, of course you cannot do it, because there is no such thing in our experience. Perhaps such a thing exists, and perhaps there are pigs that can fly, but in our uniform and repeated experience pigs do not fly and intelligent agents invariably have physical bodies that are chock-full of CSI. Just as our experience confirms that complex mechanism never arises without the action of mind, our experience confirms that mind never exists without the action of a complex mechanism. Perhaps you wish otherwise, but wishing won't make it so. These are not philosophical opinions, but rather incontrovertible facts that no reasonble person can deny.
Regardless. You just basically stated that intelligence gives rise to intelligence (and by intelligence you reduce the notion to simply 500 bits basically – semantic gimmick?).
What I said was clearly not that "intelligent gives rise to intelligence". What I said was that all entities in our experience require complex physical information processing mechanisms in order to be judged as "intelligent agents". I am not reducing "intelligence" at all, nor do I even argue against dualism! I really don't know where you are coming up with this stuff.
Remove the underlying materialistic / reductionistic presupposition that is lurking in your comment and it becomes a non-issue.
I am neither materialist nor reductionist, so either you meant this criticism for someone else or you are very, very confused. If you disagree, all you need to do is provide the accurate quote from this page showing where I said anything that could reasonably be interpreted as arguing for materialism or reductionism. You will find none. (hint: Saying that mind evidently requires mechanism is not a materialist proposition, in case you were confused about that). Perhaps you have only a single set of arguments that you array against anyone who you perceive does not agree with you. I'm afraid this strategy will not serve you well when arguing against me. null
They can question the coherency of ‘making decisions’ and ‘having desires’ while lacking consciousness. At least unless you’re ditching materialism in one hell of a way.
I see no question of coherency at all. In fact, intentional language helps us construct coherent narratives about complex behavior at a high level of abstraction.
AIGUY: Anyway, computers decide things, know things, and yes (sorry Searle) understand things too – but I don’t think they are conscious about it. Here I actually do agree with Dennett (and plenty of others): Intentional idioms like these don’t really impute real characteristics to the entity, so there is nothing metaphorical about saying “my word processor keeps trying to reformat my paragraph because it thinks that I want to change the margins”. When people object to using intentional idioms this way it is because they are associating sentience with them; even if they think there should be other differences, they can’t come up with any. NULL: And here you’re flat wrong. Even Dennett wouldn’t take this line, in part because – last I read – Dennett thinks all intentionality is derived. There is no fact of the matter about what one physical state or another ‘means’ or ‘is about’, in part because on a materialist reading there can’t be. Mental properties – aboutness, intention, consciousness, take your pick – are what was intentionally (ha) left out the view of matter so long ago.
I'm afraid I wasn't clear, or that you went off the rails a bit there, for after telling me I was flat wrong you have reiterated exactly what I just said. Yes, Dennett believes intentionality is derived, which is precisely what I meant when I said intentional idioms do not impute real characteristics to the entity. When I tell Dennett that my car didn't want to start this morning, Dennett knows I am simply using intentional idioms to describe the complex behavior of a machine - which is exactly that same thing we're doing when I say I didn't want to get out of bed this morning. I went on to say that for anyone who objects to using intentional idioms to describe cars or word processors, claiming that machines don't really want, try, or know anything, their objection is based on the (implicit or explicit) commitment that bona-fide intentionality requires conscious awareness. I understand that many philosophers would disagree, and argue that original vs. derived intentionality entails more than conscious awareness... but I think we're getting a bit deep here.
Now, if I recall, you’re a neutral monist. Maybe you’re walking down the road of saying that well, our concept of matter was wrong – there really IS aboutness in the world at the ground level, and thus a calculator really is ‘calculating’, not just ‘simulating calculating’ in some derived way.
No, this isn't what I think at all. As I said above, I happen to agree with Dennett on this point (all intentionality is derived).
This isn’t some derived intentionality, something we attribute to the computer but is ‘really’ just in our minds (or some ultimate mind that does have original intentionality), but the computer’s intentionality is original. In which case, congratulations – you don’t agree with Dennett after all, and you are (as you, if I recall, after all admit) not a materialist.
Once again: I agree with Dennett on this point, but disagree with him on many others.
At least, you weren’t until ‘materialism’ was cocked up as a word, capable of meaning everything from panpsychism to neutral monism to quite possibly idealism. And Dennett would likely agree with that much as well. Hell, so would Searle probably.
And of course I do too. The funniest take on this confusion is this: People attack materialism by first defining "materialism" as "the belief that everything is explicable by 19th century physics"... then they proceed to point out that 19th century physics cannot explain everything! Really funny (I've seen Deepak Chopra do this for example).
Do you think that decades of overstatement and abuse on one side may have precipitated the other side to finally play much the same game, by the same rules?
Oh good grief no - that's ridiculous, honestly. Almost everyone has an ideological axe to grind in the debate, and both "sides" overstate their certainty for that reason alone. Although I'm sure the friendly folks here will scoff, I do not have any desire to see mind included or excluded from our explanations. My argument is not ideological, but epistemological. My goal is not to argue for or against gods, but rather to keep people from overstepping the limits of empiricsm in support of their conclusions. That is why I argue for mysterianism, rather than taking one side or the other to even the score (or achieve consistency by multiplying errors).aiguy_{January 12, 2011
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Excellent! Thank you. I really look forward to reading your entry on the matter.above_{January 12, 2011
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above, Actually I don't have the pdf onhand, but I intend to make a greater post about that in the future on here. However, lacking that, Lennox did the entry for 'Darwinism' at plato.stanford.edu - he touches on the subject there, have a look.nullasalus_{January 12, 2011
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@null This is from the other thread, but since you're active here I thought of asking: -"Are you aware of James Lennox’s views about how Darwinism is inherently teleological (if wedded to ‘randomness’)? And if so, do you have any opinion of such?" Can you give me the cliff notes of this idea of Lennox? Or a link perhaps?above_{January 12, 2011
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aiguy, I don’t find inferring a human-like mind in something that is obviously nothing whatsoever like a human to be reasonable, but since we can’t adjudicate these assessments by appeal to shared experience, let’s just agree to disagree about that. Fair enough. I would say that computers of today think without consciousness, that they make choices and decisions but lack libertarian free will, and that they have goals and desires but they are not consciously aware of them, and that they cannot experience emotions. Nobody can demonstrate that I am right or wrong about any of these things, for two different reasons. The first reason is because most of these propositions are analytic rather than synthetic, and the second reason is because the actual characteristics in question can’t be observed. They can question the coherency of 'making decisions' and 'having desires' while lacking consciousness. At least unless you're ditching materialism in one hell of a way. Yes, that is what he thinks, and I disagree with him about that. I never denied that! What I said no competent philosopher would agree with is that one can refute functionalism or materialism by claiming “computers can’t say to themselves ‘I ought to do such-and-such’”. What Menuge is attempting to refute with his example is a particular argument about how minds, brains and computers work, or at least a particular materialist argument. I suppose you can say he's going after materialism as a whole by taking down said argument, but I think even Menuge would realize that refutation in his field would at best amount to a claim of 'Alright, we have to think about this more', or a slide into eliminative materialism on this front. Anyway, computers decide things, know things, and yes (sorry Searle) understand things too – but I don’t think they are conscious about it. Here I actually do agree with Dennett (and plenty of others): Intentional idioms like these don’t really impute real characteristics to the entity, so there is nothing metaphorical about saying “my word processor keeps trying to reformat my paragraph because it thinks that I want to change the margins”. When people object to using intentional idioms this way it is because they are associating sentience with them; even if they think there should be other differences, they can’t come up with any. And here you're flat wrong. Even Dennett wouldn't take this line, in part because - last I read - Dennett thinks all intentionality is derived. There is no fact of the matter about what one physical state or another 'means' or 'is about', in part because on a materialist reading there can't be. Mental properties - aboutness, intention, consciousness, take your pick - are what was intentionally (ha) left out the view of matter so long ago. Now, if I recall, you're a neutral monist. Maybe you're walking down the road of saying that well, our concept of matter was wrong - there really IS aboutness in the world at the ground level, and thus a calculator really is 'calculating', not just 'simulating calculating' in some derived way. This isn't some derived intentionality, something we attribute to the computer but is 'really' just in our minds (or some ultimate mind that does have original intentionality), but the computer's intentionality is original. In which case, congratulations - you don't agree with Dennett after all, and you are (as you, if I recall, after all admit) not a materialist. At least, you weren't until 'materialism' was cocked up as a word, capable of meaning everything from panpsychism to neutral monism to quite possibly idealism. And Dennett would likely agree with that much as well. Hell, so would Searle probably. Everybody makes inferences about everything all the time. They become scientific when they can be verified by appeal to shared experience. No such luck on the questions we’re discussing. I think you'll find your view is sadly in the minority. If it wasn't, there would probably be no ID movement as such. It'd be a very different world. Really – you have no opinion whatsoever about what distinguishes a scientific result from any other proposition? Who the hell am I, aiguy? I'm someone writing under a pseudonym in the comments section of a blog. My opinion hardly matters. But, marginal as I am, I can make a decision about who or what to support when these far better funded people start to argue, and point out what follows if one is consistent. Sometimes it's better to comment and think that way. Advocates on both sides overstate their case. Perhaps. Do you think that decades of overstatement and abuse on one side may have precipitated the other side to finally play much the same game, by the same rules?nullasalus_{January 12, 2011
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-“Now, here’s one for you: “AIGuy claims that each and every instance of intelligent agency requires CSI exceeding a 500 bit threshold”. Has any IDist produced any evidence to refute that?” Without materialism your example is null. Regardless. You just basically stated that intelligence gives rise to intelligence (and by intelligence you reduce the notion to simply 500 bits basically – semantic gimmick?). Remove the underlying materialistic / reductionistic presupposition that is lurking in your comment and it becomes a non-issue. -“You have a very weird view of what “dogma” is.” Not at all. But you seem have a very strange way of trying to mask it. “Mindless happenstance” is not a satisfactory causal explanation for anything at all, of course. But if we don’t know how something came about, we do indeed need to look for an answer. When you come up with one that explains how the CSI we observe in living systems and the physical constants, then I’ll be interested to hear it so I can judge whether or not your explanation can be verified. If you invoke “intelligent agency” as your explanation then of course you’ll need to provide an operationalized definition for that so we can decide if such a thing exists or not. Otherwise I will assume all you mean is what we already know about (“human beings and other animals”), which could not possibly be responsible for the phenomena we observe” This whole paragraph is testament to the above dogma I mentioned. Specifically reductionism and verificationism. Verificationism as a theory is dead. It has been for 50 years now. Karl Popper says hello by the way! ? -“1) Either the universe was created by natural causes or it was created by supernatural magical self-organization. 2) You can’t explain explain how natural causes can account for the existence of the universe. 3) Therefore the universe was created by supernatural magical self-organization.” This is the best you can do? What’s next? You’re going to give us the son of the great pumpkin argument? LOL! Parody arguments hardly serve to undermine much but nice try. Anyway, that is not the argument I had in mind at all. So to parody that is irrelevant. Your formulation in fact commits the fallacy of the excluded middle. I don’t think it is I that is confused. Anyways the bottom line is that your whole argument hinges on materialism, reductionism and verificationism. All of which are self refuting.above_{January 12, 2011
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